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January 29, 2010

The megapixels don’t matter

I’ve heard this said about digital cameras several times over the past few days. It seems that most digital cameras now come with sufficient megapixels (8, 10,12…) that technology experts are advising consumers that more megapixels are not necessarily better.

Now other features (such as lenses, facial recognition capabilities, ease of use…) are more critical considerations… the megapixels don’t matter.

Of course up until recently the more megapixels the better the camera and the more one would expect to pay. So camera manufacturers would race each other to pack the most megapixels into their cameras so they could charge a premium… the megapixels mattered.

I was recently watching Lethal Weapon 2 on television and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) was carrying a bulky cellular phone that had its own handle to lug it around. It reminded me that not so long ago cellular phone manufacturers were in a race to produce the smallest cellular phone on the market so they could charge a premium for it… the size mattered.

But today feature rich iPhones, Blackberries and Nokia smart phones are some of the biggest (in physical size as well as market share) on the market… the size doesn’t matter.

I wrote recently asking if owners and managers truly understood their value proposition.

It got me thinking what are you offering that no longer matters to the market… the latest cutting edge equipment (when the previous model was sufficient)… more TVs (when the ones you had were sufficient)… paint colours (when the other ones were fine)…

And while you are busy competing on the things that no longer matter to the market… what aren’t you competing on that does matter?